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Who suffers most from climate change?

Fifty years after the game-changing Second Vatican Council a new generation helps the church respond to today’s signs of the times. Here, Dom Erwin Krautler stresses the importance of paying attention to climate change because of its human cost.

The church calls on all people and governments to protect the future of God’s creation by addressing the urgent threat of global warming.

Dom Erwin Kräutler is the bishop of Xingu, Brazil. In 2010 he received the Right Livelihood Award for his work for the human and environmental rights of indigenous peoples and his efforts to save the Amazon forest. He has been a leading opponent of the controversial huge Belo Monte dam in his diocese.

Who suffers most from climate change?

Fifty years after the game-changing Second Vatican Council a new generation helps the church respond to today’s signs of the times. Here, Dom Erwin Krautler stresses the importance of paying attention to climate change because of its human cost.

The church calls on all people and governments to protect the future of God’s creation by addressing the urgent threat of global warming.

Dom Erwin Kräutler is the bishop of Xingu, Brazil. In 2010 he received the Right Livelihood Award for his work for the human and environmental rights of indigenous peoples and his efforts to save the Amazon forest. He has been a leading opponent of the controversial huge Belo Monte dam in his diocese.

Vatican 2.0: A look ahead to the next 50 years

ArticleEnvironmentEthic of LifePrayer and SacramentsScripture and TheologySex and SexualitySocial JusticeSpiritualityWar and PeaceWomenYoung Adults

Fifty years after the game-changing council a new generation helps the church respond to today’s signs of the times.

Rather than taking another nostalgic look back at the Second Vatican Council, the editors of U.S. Catholic decided to mark this month’s 50th anniversary of its opening by inviting some of today’s leading thinkers in the church to sketch out principles that might guide the people of God in responding to several new signs of the times.

Gluttony is the only one of the not-so-magnificent seven that is literally a deadly sin; Americans have been proving that through congested arteries and heart disease for decades. Lifestyle-driven diabetes makes a cross of daily life for thousands and now even burdens U.S. children, many of whom contract the debilitating illness because of sedentary childhoods and poor eating habits.

In Appalachia, the coal industry thrives on stripping the landscape—and people’s livelihoods.

Rick Handshoe lives on the battle line. Explosions shake his house regularly, covering it with dust and debris and cracking its foundation. A convoy of supply trucks rumbles constantly past his front porch. He lives amid danger and disturbance, with peace but a distant memory.

Kyle T. Kramer is the author of A Time to Plant: Life Lessons in Work, Prayer, and Dirt (Sorin Books, 2010).